The present invention relates to apparatus, and also to a method, for monitoring the health condition of a subject.
At the present time, there are three general techniques for monitoring the health condition of subjects: (1) physical techniques e.g., measurements of blood-pressure, pulse, body temperature, examination by x-rays, etc.; (2) chemical techniques, e g., chemical analysis of blood, urine, feces, etc.; and (3) biochemical and biological techniques, e.g., cytological, immunological, hematological and enzymological tests, etc. The above techniques are usually used in a complimentary manner according to the particular case.
While the physical techniques are generally non-invasive, and can be applied in a continuous manner if desired, this is not true of the chemical, biological, and biochemical techniques. For example, analyzing a blood sample requires not only invading the subject's body, but also basing the diagnosis on a momentary condition of the subject's body, namely when the sample was taken. While urine and feces analysis techniques are non-invasive, they reflect an average condition over the period of time during which the analyzed sample accumulated. Moreover, in all the foregoing chemical techniques, the diagnosis is generally not made on a real-time basis, since the sample is usually sent to a laboratory for analysis and therefore a delay is involved between the time at which the sample was taken and the time when a diagnosis can be made. Also, analysis in the laboratory runs the risk of mistakes in the correct identification of the sample analysed.